Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Rahul’s Mona Lisa Smile

Is Rahul Gandhi secretly relieved he didn't get picked for a job he didn't want in the first place? 
                                                                                          ©Getty Images 
Blackbird singing in the dead of night,
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see,
All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free... 
               - The Beatles, Blackbird (1968) 

Psychologists and behavioural analysts are likely to find Rahul Gandhi a singularly compelling subject. Many have already attempted to deconstruct the person behind the persona; commenting on his inability to make eye-contact, possible attention deficit disorder, and a generally nervous, stand-offish disposition. 

I am not an expert and therefore don't have a professional opinion. However, going purely by what I've seen on TV (obviously not the best way to judge anyone), coupled with my wife’s empathetic insight, it's hard not to feel that if there's one thing that characterises Rahul Gandhi, it is that he seems trapped. Not just trapped in the sense of being a child trapped in a man's body; but trapped within his own circumstances, a situation he was born into and is ultimately unable to escape from (with or without Jupiter's escape velocity). 

It is impossible for any of us to imagine being Rahul, or any Gandhi for that matter. 'Normal' might be a relative term, but with the sort of relatives Rahul has, there's probably been no such thing for him. Much newsprint is devoted to the aspects of entitlement and privilege, but there is another side to being part of the 'dynasty' that we often ignore. For all its supposed benefits, is it the sort of life any of us would choose for ourselves? Does all the security in the world make you feel safe when your grandmother was gunned down by her own guards? 

History attests to the fact that Jawaharlal Nehru was as canny as they come; Indira Gandhi was his natural political heir. But Rajiv (the diffident, stand-offish one) was neither suited nor primed for politics. The mind wanders now into hypothetical territory- how different would Rahul's life had been if his uncle Sanjay had not been killed in a flying accident in 1980 and his father had never been subsequently coerced into entering the fray? 

Rajiv Gandhi was parachuted in to rescue a party teetering on the brink; within four years he was Prime Minister. Rahul Gandhi has been a Member of Parliament for ten years; after the 2009 elections he steadfastly rejected calls to be part of the cabinet of the UPA government, choosing to stick with his self-appointed role of mobilising the Youth Congress. It may have been the only political decision he made of his own volition. 

Five years later, in 2014, he found himself as the 'unofficial' Prime Ministerial candidate, despite never having actually said so himself. Whether or not he truly wanted the job we may never know; but to his credit, he at least seemed to want to provide a half-decent CV for consideration. 

Somewhere along the way, you feel as though Rahul Gandhi felt compelled to take his rightful place in the tangled web that was his life, like Simba taking up Mufasa's mantle in the Lion King because this is the only purpose for Simba’s existence. (It’s a somewhat facetious analogy, but it does the job, I think). He doesn’t really believe the future of the pride land hinges on him, but anyone who means anything to him does. The question is, is there a really a choice? Is he duty-bound to fulfil both his own destiny and the destiny of those around him or could he walk away and risk seeing everything fall apart? Can someone who has already seen so much fall apart legitimately make that choice? 

I would like to think that at some point, even if only in a remote corner of his mind, Rahul realised that victory in this election was simply impossible. I would also like to think that he understood that his presence at the front and centre of the campaign was doing more than harm than good to the party. I would like to think, I really would, that he tried to tell his partymen this, but they didn't believe him; the fools. And even now, I would like to think that he is really just a sad, slightly damaged man-child, chasing a normalcy that we take for granted but he has never known himself. 

The Gandhi brand is to the Congress party what Hindutva is to the BJP; each is both a calling-card and a crutch. Neither party has had a vision (at least until now) that truly extends beyond these core identities. As a result, many found it strange when Rahul himself seemed to undermine the dynasty; questioning its relevance and underplaying its significance. It was roundly dismissed as empty rhetoric. 

But a niggling doubt, long suppressed, now bubbles up to the surface- was he on to something? Was this his way of saying that he was in fact the wrong guy, that we were making a mistake? At several points in what we now know was an utterly ill-fated campaign, he seemed to take a sledgehammer not just to himself, but to the office of the Prime Minister and the party as a whole. We decided he was either a charlatan or a moron. We jeered at the cheesy sloganeering, derided the prime-time interview debacle. 

And yet, and yet, the mind still wonders...could it be? This might have been the only way to prove what he knew all along: the days of The Family were long gone. A new India needed a new vision, a new direction, and he was not the one to provide it. The Congress party needed to reform itself to stay relevant; the crutch had to go for it to grow stronger in the long run. Perhaps a Congress minus the Gandhis might even eventually result in a BJP minus the Hindutva because, in a sense, the latter exists as a counter to the former. 

Fast-forward to the 16th of May when he appears in front of the clamouring press to cap off what has been the party's worst-ever election performance; and another thought crosses your mind, just for the briefest moment. While the vast majority appeared to celebrate India’s freedom from the Gandhi family, was Rahul celebrating a freedom (however small) of his own? You look for signs in the rueful smile; you wonder whether even in the face of staggering defeat, he realises there could have been one thing that was even worse- he could have won. 

But no, this is crazy talk. It involves attributing qualities like intelligence and political nous to someone who possesses these in very limited quantities, if at all. This is simply your mind playing tricks on you, lost as it is in a hazy, post-election fog. It is an attempt to justify, defend, and rationalise the past. And so you switch instead to the future- to what lies ahead. 

In the UK, when a leader of a political party fails to secure an election victory, it is more or less a given he or she will not lead the party again. This means if you are unsuccessful in your first attempt to become Prime Minister, you don't have a second attempt. It is done. 

We are talking about India, however; the land of seemingly endless re-incarnation and re-invention, where some things are always changing and other things stay the same. We are also talking about a Gandhi, and a grand old party that’s on its knees. 

When all the Modi-fication is over and done with, what becomes of Rahul and the Congress? Will lessons be learned, or will we be saying the same things about a different Gandhi five years from now? We can only wait and see.

1 comment:

Susan said...

You dare to be different! Most analysts / writers are voicing forth on Modimania, and have summarily consigned Rahul of the Gandhi's, to History's rubbish bin! Your views of his situation and predicament are both insightful and empathetic. Very well written indeed.